


Scars

by ADashOfStarshine (ADashOfInsanity)



Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Asexual Character, F/M, Holding Hands, Post-War of the Spark, Written for Month of the Ship on tumblr, backstory discussion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-13 14:56:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18471271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ADashOfInsanity/pseuds/ADashOfStarshine
Summary: Our scars remind us of what we've been through, but we can choose not to let them define us.Jace contemplates his role in Ravnica, his new relationship with Vraska and the scars they've received up to this point.





	Scars

In the last few months, Jace’s hands had seen more scars than they had in over a decade. Rope-burn, cuts from fishing-tackle, impacts from rocks after a fall, jagged gashes from falling masonry, failed attempts to avoid the points of spears and the claws of beasts. Most scars would fade over time. They would go from raw and pink, to as white and ghostly as his tattoos, before fading entirely. Occasionally they would itch, twinge, and he would be reminded of them anew. Yet, as he sat in his office, doing the job he always ought to have done, he couldn’t help but consider that some marks never truly faded.

His mind was the most intact it had been in many years. He could trace each line, each mark, like a record scrawled across his skin. He could relive the pain, re-experience the confusion, the loss, the betrayal, like the wound was fresh all over again. Yet he knew now. He understood. Despite all that had passed, these old wounds did not dictate the man he was today. He got to decide that. Just like he had decided to come to the forefront in restoring a scarred and broken Ravnica. The city plane had reached the turning of age. They did not have to build a pastiche of the past; they certainly shouldn’t return it to exactly how it once was. Ravnica had a chance to mend, to heal old enmities and foster a more prosperous relationship between guilds. The history of the plane would shape the events going forwards, but would not define them.

No one had come out of the war unchanged.

Jace had expected to come out the other side with a crisis on his hands. He had expected the urgent meetings, the mobilised efforts to repair, replenish and restore order. He had expected the frantic guild meetings, the wildly contrasting cultures bent to one goal. He even predicted that some of the planeswalkers might stick around to give aid or demand answers. Or at least help bury a few friends.  Yet there was one result he certainly hadn’t anticipated. He had ended up with a new relationship.

Giving Vraska back her memories had been fraught with danger. Without her recollections of their time on Ixalan, the Guildmaster was still very hostile towards him and everything she supposed he stood for. However, times of crisis made for unlikely unions, and she had met with him without trying to petrify him even once – which he counted as extremely lucky. He had to be within a certain distance to transfer the memories back. Every step he took towards the Queen had been dogged by the eyes of assassins, both visible and not. When she showed signs of pain at the sudden rush of recollection, there had been more than one angry sword or staff pointed in his direction. Fortunately, she regained her senses before he had to fight off Golgari troops. 

She, among Ral and others, had been instrumental to saving their city. And afterwards, as the scope of the devastation was finally realised, she was the first to orchestrate her guild into spreading food and other supplies about the ruined populace. This had made his job as Guildpact phenomenally easier, as he only had to show the other Guild leaders what she was doing to persuade them to step up their attempts to prove their commitment to Ravnica.  Once the initial crisis was averted, they met in person again, away from the titles of Guildpact and Guildmaster. They talked of their time at sea, how they felt about that now, and where that left them. After a few after-work meetings, things gained a certain level of tension. Jace suddenly became worried about his hair looked every time he waited for her outside a café. She would fill her bag with books and trinkets from her home above ground, wanting to impress him with all the discoveries she’d made across the multiverse. Slowly they both realised that what they were doing, and after a slightly awkward conversation in a too-fancy restaurant, they started to date.

Around each other, their scars began to show. At first, Jace couldn’t help but feel like he was tenterhooks whenever they were alone. He wanted her to be happy with him. He wanted his every action to please her. He wouldn’t be able to stand it if she turned round and treated him with the same cool indifference, the icy mockery, he’d come to expect from a relationship. He expected nothing he did to quite be enough, and apologised for his own flaws before she could mention them. Of course she never did. She insisted, with gentle patience, that she understood his anxiety. She didn’t think he was needy. She didn’t believe he had anything to prove. She wanted to be with the him she saw right in front of her. He didn’t need to change. This was so hard to accept that they did this routine so many times, he was scared she’d get sick of it. She never did.

Perhaps it was because Vraska was fighting her own internal battles. She was instinctively wary. She was too used to be treated with disgust at best and violence at worst. Life had been no more kind to her than it had Jace. She shied from physical contact like she thought a simple touch would burn her. Killer, she called herself, as if she hadn’t already proved she was so much more than that. She was so used to being treated as a weapon, of believing herself to be a weapon, that she often demeaned herself as if it was fact.  She struggled to accept compliments. Jace thought her slight bashfulness at receiving praise was endearing, but it was the tip of a much deeper struggle with her confidence. She had excelled herself as a leader, both on Ixalan and at home, but the doubt nagged away, a scar that would not truly fade.

They had never tried to be physically intimate. The topic had never come up, but Vraska had once told him she didn’t experience the sexual sort of attraction she’d read about in so many books. Coupled with her aversion to touch, Jace paid the notion little mind. Besides, he wondered if he could be intimate with anyone again without dredging up memories he’d rather lay buried. Intimacy for him had always been a foul concoction of sweet gestures and mocking words, in equal parts pleasure and deep-set shame.  It would be different with someone else, he knew it. It was unfair on Vraska to imagine their relationship to be anything like he had shared with _her_. However, those scars still felt raw and bruised. He was grateful for not having to prod them.

Together they could heal. At first it had seemed a novelty. Jace had perceived those around him, fellow planeswalkers, as pillars of strength. Unique in their own ways but peerless, strong, if not prone to the occasional outburst. He had come to realise, amidst the smoking remains of a city he had failed to protect, that they all had scars to heal. Planeswalking was not a normal happenstance, that much was obvious. Yet people didn’t thrust themselves across the multiverse and come back the same person. Perhaps he and Vraska had been fortunate to meet again in the way they did. He, without the burden of knowing what he was. She, in a new environment where she could define who she was and how others perceived her. Now they had returned to where they started, they had an understanding that went far beyond seeing each other as the pillars of strength planeswalkers were perceived to be.

And it was working. With his mind now complete, Jace felt he had learned more in the last few months than he had in years of research and psychic delving. At this moment in time, he knew who he was and who he wanted to be. He may carry his scars with him everywhere he went but they did not define him. They had shaped him, that was undeniable, but they did not dictate who he could be, what he could achieve. He would choose to love, to care, for himself all the more knowing he had survived others’ attempts to shape him to their will. He had learned that from his time at sea, with Vraska, and he knew it was a philosophy she lived by.

 Once she had lurked in shadow, believing her ability to spread death was her defining quality. Others saw her as a killer, so a killer was all she thought herself to be. Yet look at her now. Jace couldn’t help but be amazed by how far she had brought herself, impressed by her strength and determination. After discovering her assassination of the Azorius Guildmaster, he had done a little research. He’d located the records of the Azorius raids into Golgari territory, the terrible conditions enforced upon innocent citizens, and the murders that happened over a decade later. The public perception of gorgons was no secret, but these were time of change. Vraska, Queen of the Golgari walked in daylight. She was a leader ready to be seen by all. She met with the most important figures in Ravnica, spoke out for the lowest tiers of society, made herself instrumental in the running of her home plane. She had turned her self-belief into action, her compassion into lasting change. She had become the person she wanted to be, the person she knew she could be, and that to Jace was an achievement without parallel.

Yet on a smaller scale, they were still growing. Slowly but surely healing over the sort of scars that only exposed themselves in a more personal surrounding. Jace wouldn’t forget the evening they had spent, sat in an old bar, so busy that no one would notice the plain-clothed Guildpact and Guildmaster sitting in their midst. There was music, a quartet of vedalken with string instruments Jace struggled to identify. They had been discussing literature, memoirs Vraska had recommended, and the recent newspaper stories that were sharing tales of hope mingled in with the numerical fall out of the war. Vraska had paused mid-sentence, as if she had caught herself before saying something she might regret. However, that wasn’t the case. Jace felt sharp fingernails brush against his knuckles and realised she had momentarily placed her hand over his. They both stared at their hands, as if they had never seen them before. Vraska gave a small cough, hair curling about her cheeks as if to hide her expression.

Ever so slowly, giving her plenty of time to withdraw, Jace placed his hand beside hers. He gently entwined his fingers with hers and she couldn’t help but watch the motion. They sat there, holding hands, not saying anything. Her hands were rough, as expected from one who could fight as well as she. There was a rough ridge of scarring across her palm that Jace was sure came from a large blade. Her fingernails were naturally sharp and pointed, a gorgon trait no doubt. If she squeezed, she could probably puncture flesh, but he trusted her with the possibility. He hadn’t brought his gloves, so she was free to feel the numerous coffee burns and paper cuts that littered his palm and fingers. There was a thick trench of a mark across the back of his hand up to the knuckle of his middle finger, carved there with a mana blade. If his hands felt unpleasant to her, she said nothing. Somehow this little gesture, this solidarity in a crowd of unknown faces, stuck with him far longer than he thought it might.

 This was an acknowledgement in a way. That they both had experienced things that would stay with them for life. That they both had scars, but neither would let them stand in the way of happiness.  They had shown them, they had shared them, and perhaps, after all had been said, had grown closer because of it.


End file.
